Musical chairs; Perry’s hypocrisy

Those who go around, come around. The newly unveiled management team for the Margaritaville Casino in Biloxi has a distinct aura of déja vu. CEO Tom Brosig used to be Lyle Berman‘s right-hand man at Grand Casinos, whose Biloxi casino was gobbled up by Park Place Entertainment and later by Harrah’s Entertainment. As you’ll recall, that was supposed to be transmogrified into a $1 billion, Margaritaville-themed casino but fell victim to the company’s catastrophic LBO.

Among those who were left without a chair when Gary Loveman stopped the music was Karen Sock. A longtime veteran of the Mississippi casino industry, Sock was scheduled to helm the Jimmy Buffett-style reinvention of Grand Casino Biloxi, a plum that was lost amid Loveman’s blundering. She subsequently resurfaced as part of Alex Yemenidjian‘s proposed management team for a Des Plaines, Ill., casino project (which the state awarded to Neil Bluhm instead). Being GM of a $48 million grind joint in Biloxi doesn’t have quite the cachet of either the vanished Des Plaines or Harrah’s/Margaritaville prospects … but it’s a job.

When the list of bad decisions made by Loveman is tallied, one of the top three will surely be the trading of two casino licenses on Lake Charles, La., for some extra beachfront in Biloxi. Pinnacle Entertainment‘s then-CEO, Dan Lee, robbed Loveman blind. Today, Pinnacle has two footholds in the remunerative Lake Charles market and a new riverboat a-building in Baton Rouge. Loveman has a bunch of sand he can’t afford to develop. Game, set and match to Pinnacle.

Also on the move is well-traveled exec Joe Hasson. The former Harrah’s New Orleans boss is ditching his current job as general manger of Sunset Station and moving east. He’ll replace Anthony Rodio at the pilot wheel of Penn National Gaming‘s riverboat operation in Lawrenceburg. Hasson must like a challenge: He’ll be walking into the buzzsaw that is Caesars Entertainment‘s soon-to-be Horseshoe casino in Cincinnati. However, having spent over two decades in the company that Bill Harrah built, Hasson is well-versed in the ways of the adversary he’ll be facing. And, as a marathon runner, he knows what it’s like to be in a race for the long haul.

In the great state of Texas, there has been no thornier, more tenacious or intractable foe of casino gambling than Gov. Rick Perry (aka “Gov. Goodhair”). Perry views casinos as an insidious threat which will undermine the moral fiber of Texans and is perfectly content to wave goodbye to Lone Star State dollars that flow across the border to Oklahoma and Louisiana. However, he saw no problem in giving a high-five to Chinese high-tech firm Huawei, toplined by a former People’s Liberation Army spook, despite bipartisan opposition in Washington, D.C., sparked by grave security concerns.

Evidently, ‘straight talk’ and dodgy associations are A-OK with Gov. Goodhair so long as not one slot-machine lever is pulled. But he refuses to “buy American” and, in doing so, stigmatizes an industry whose reputation is much better than Huawei’s. Nobody has ever classified Tilman Fertitta, Penn National, Las Vegas Sands or any other would-be Texas casino investors as security risks. But they’re left out in the cold while Huawei prospers. This may or may not have anything to do with Perry’s Dominionist beliefs (a form of theocracy) but it’s intellectual dishonesty for certain.